Between two small mounds that held on high their rose-colored buds there was a valley that, though darkly burned by the sun, still had not lost the delicacy, the smoothness, the veined coolness of skin—a valley fragrant with thoughts of early spring. Keeping pace with the normal growth of the rest of her body, her breasts were in no way late in their development. Yet their roundness, still tinged with the firmness of childhood, seemed on the verge of awakening from sleep, seemed ready to come awake at the slightest touch of a feather, at the caress of the slightest breeze.
The old grandmother could not resist the impulse to lay her hand against the nipples of these breasts that were so healthily virginal and, at the same time, so exquisitely formed. The touch of her rough palm made Hatsue jump to her feet.
Everyone laughed.
“So now do you understand how men must feel about them, Grandma Ohara?” someone asked.
The old woman rubbed her own wrinkle-covered breasts with both hands and then spoke in a cracking voice:
“What’re you talking about? Hers are just green peaches, but mine—mine are well-seasoned pickles. They’ve soaked up a lot of delicious flavor, let me tell you.”
Hatsue laughed and tossed her head. A piece of green, transparent seaweed fell from her hair to the dazzling sand.
While they were all eating their lunches, a favorite man of theirs suddenly appeared from behind some rocks where he had been awaiting what he knew would be the propitious moment.
The women all screamed for the sake of screaming, put their lunches back into the bamboo-leaf wrappers on the ground beside them, and covered their breasts. Actually, they were not in the slightest taken aback. The intruder was an old peddler who made his way to the island every season, and their pretense at bashfulness was nothing but their way of poking fun at his old age.
The old man was wearing a seedy pair of trousers and a white, open-necked shirt. He put down on a rock the big cloth-wrapped bundle he was carrying on his back and wiped the sweat from his face.
“I guess I gave you an awful scare, didn’t I? Maybe it was wrong of me to come like this. Shall I go away?”
The peddler said this in full confidence that they would never let him go. He well knew that there was no better way of arousing the divers’ desire to buy than by exhibiting his goods here on the beach. The divers always felt bold and open-handed when they were beside the sea. So he would have them choose what they wanted to buy here, and then the same night he would deliver the goods to their homes and collect his money. The women too liked it this way because they could judge colors better in the sunlight.
The old peddler spread his wares out in the shade of some rocks. Still cramming the lunches into their mouths, the women crowded around the display.
There were lengths of stencil-dyed cotton material for summer kimonos. There were light housedresses and children’s clothes. There were unlined sashes, underpants, undershirts, and sash strings.
The peddler took the lid off a flat wooden box, and cries of admiration escaped from the women’s mouths. The box was filled to overflowing with beautiful notions—coin purses, clog thongs, plastic handbags, ribbons, brooches, and the like, all in assorted colors.
“There’s not a thing there I wouldn’t like to have,” one of the young divers truthfully remarked.
In a flash many sun-blackened fingers reached out; the goods were painstakingly examined and criticized; arguments broke out among the women as to whether something was or was not becoming to so-and-so; and half-joking bargaining grew apace. As a result the peddler sold two lengths of summer-kimono material in tawdry, towellike patterns at almost a thousand yen each, as well as one unlined sash of a mixed weave, and a large amount of sundry merchandise. Shinji’s mother bought a plastic shopping-bag for two hundred yen, and Hatsue bought a length of the better cotton-kimono material, in a youthful pattern of dark-blue morning-glories on a white background.
The old peddler was pleased with all this unexpectedly good business. He was quite gaunt, and his sunburned ribs could be seen through the open collar of his shirt. His pepper-and-salt hair was cut short, and the years had deposited a number of dark splotches on his cheeks and temples. He had only a few straggling tobacco-stained teeth, which made it difficult to understand what he said, and still more so now when he raised his voice loudly. Nevertheless, by the laughter that made his cheeks tremble as though with a twitch and by his exaggerated gestures, the women realized that the peddler was about to render them some magnificent service, “quite apart from any desire for gain.”
With scurrying fingers—he had let the nail grow long on the little finger of each hand—the peddler produced three beautiful plastic handbags from the box of notions.
“Look! This blue one is for young ladies, this brown for the middle-aged, and this black for ladies of advanced years—”
“I’ll take the young ladies’ one,” the same old woman broke in, and everyone laughed, causing the peddler to raise his quavering voice still higher.
“Plastic handbags of the very latest fashion. Fixed price, eight hundred yen—”
“Oh, they’re dear, aren’t they?”
“Of course; he’s padded the price.”
“No, no, eight hundred yen without any padding at all. And I’m going to present one of these beautiful handbags to one of you ladies as a token of my appreciation for your kind patronage … absolutely free!”
Dozens of guileless, open hands were simultaneously stretched forth. But the old man brushed them aside with a flourish.
“One, I said. Just one. It’s the Omiya Prize, a sort of sacrificial service rendered by my shop, the Omiya Shop, in celebration of the prosperity of Uta-jima Village. We’ll have a contest, and one of these bags shall go to whoever wins. The blue if the victor is young, the brown if it’s a middle-aged lady …”
The diving women were holding their breath. Each was thinking that, with just a little luck, she would receive an eight-hundred-yen handbag for nothing.
The peddler had once been a grade-school principal and often brooded over having come to his present humble circumstances because of a mess he had gotten into with a woman, but now the divers’ silence gave him new confidence in his ability to win people’s hearts, and once again he told himself that he would quit peddling and become an athletic director.
“Well, then, if we’re to have a contest, it ought to be something for the good of Uta-jima Village, to which I owe so much. How about it, everyone—what would you say to an abalone contest? And to the person who brings up the biggest catch in the next hour I’ll present the prize.”
Ceremoniously he spread a cloth in the shade of another rock and gravely decked it with the prizes. To tell the truth, not one of the handbags was worth more than about five hundred yen, but they looked worth fully eight hundred. The youthful prize was sky-blue and box-shaped, and its cobalt color, bright as a new-built boat, made an inexpressibly lovely contrast with its glittering, gold-plated clasp. The brown, middle-aged one was also box-shaped, and its ostrich-skin pattern had been so exceedingly well pressed into the plastic that at first glance one could not tell whether it was genuine ostrich skin or not. Only the black one, for old ladies, was not box-shaped, but with its long and slender golden clasp and its oblong boat shape, it was indeed a tasteful, refined piece of workmanship.
Shinji’s mother, who wanted the brown, middle-aged bag, was the first to announce her name for the contest.
The second person who called out her name was Hatsue.
Carrying the eight divers who had entered the contest, the boat pulled away from the shore. A fat, middle-aged woman, who had not entered the contest, stood in the stern and sculled. Of the eight, Hatsue was the only young girl. All the other girls had held back, knowing they could not win anyway; they were cheering for Hatsue. As for the other women left on the beach, each was shouting encouragement to her own favorite.
The boat took a southward course along the beach and moved away to the eastern
side of the island.
The divers who were left behind gathered around the old peddler and sang songs.
The water in the cove was clear and blue, and when the waves were still one could plainly see the round rocks on the bottom, covered with red seaweed and looking as though they were floating close to the surface. Actually, however, they were deeply submerged. The waves swelled large at this point, throwing shadows of their patterns and refractions of froth over the rocks on the ocean floor as they passed over them. Then, no sooner had a wave risen full than it smashed itself to pieces on the beach. Thereupon a reverberation like that of a deep sigh would overflow the entire beach and drown out the women’s singing.
An hour later the boat returned from the eastern side of the island. Many times more exhausted than usual because of the competition, the eight divers sat silent in the boat, leaning against one another, each staring out toward whatever direction her eyes happened to fancy. Their wet, disheveled hair was so tangled together that it was impossible to tell one diver’s hair from that of her neighbors. Two of them were hugging each other to keep warm. All their breasts were covered with goose flesh, and in the too-brilliant sunshine even their naked, sunburned bodies seemed to turn pale, making them look like a group of pallid, drowned corpses.
The noisy reception they received from the beach was out of keeping with the quietness of this boat that moved so soundlessly forward. The moment they were on land the eight women collapsed on the sand around the fire and would not even speak.
The peddler checked the contents of the buckets he had collected from the divers. When he was done, he called out the results in a loud voice:
“Hatsue-san is first—twenty abalone! And the mistress of the Kubo family is second—eighteen!”
The winner and the runner-up, Hatsue and Shinji’s mother, exchanged glances out of tired, bloodshot eyes. The island’s most expert diver had been bested by a girl who had learned her skill from the divers of another island.
Hatsue got to her feet in silence and went around the rock to receive her prize. And the prize she returned with was the brown, middle-aged handbag, which she pressed into the hands of Shinji’s mother.
The mother’s cheeks flushed red with delight.
“But … why? …”
“Because I’ve always wanted to apologize ever since my father spoke so rudely to Auntie that day.”
“She’s a fine girl!” the peddler shouted, and when everyone joined in with unanimous praise of Hatsue, urging the older woman to accept the girl’s kindness, Shinji’s mother took the brown handbag, wrapped it carefully in a piece of paper, clasped it under a bare arm, and spoke quite casually:
“Why, thanks.”
The mother’s simple, straightforward heart had immediately understood the modesty and respect behind the girl’s gesture. Hatsue smiled, and Shinji’s mother told herself how wise her son had been in his choice of a bride. … And it was in this same fashion that the politics of the island were always conducted.
14
FOR SHINJI the rainy reason brought only one bitter day after another. Even Hatsue’s letters had ceased. Doubtless, after her father had frustrated their meeting at Yashiro Shrine, which he had probably learned about by reading her letter, he had absolutely forbidden Hatsue to write again.
One day before the end of the rains the captain of the Utajima-maru came to the island. The Utajima-maru was the larger of Terukichi Miyata’s two coasting freighters and was now anchored at Toba.
The captain went first to Terukichi’s house, and next to Yasuo’s. The same night he went to see Shinji’s boss, Jukichi, and then at last went to Shinji’s house.
The captain was a few years past forty and had three children. He was a man of big stature and proud of his strength, but he had a gentle disposition. He was a zealous member of the Nichiren sect, and if he happened to be on the island at the time of the Lantern Festival, he would always officiate as a sort of lay priest in reading the sutras for the repose of the souls of the dead. He had women in various ports, whom his crew referred to as the Yokohama aunt, the Moji aunt, and the like. Whenever the ship called at one of these ports, the captain would take the young crew members along to his woman’s place for a drink. The “aunts” all dressed conservatively and always treated the young men with great kindness.
The gossip was that the captain’s half-bald head was the result of his debaucheries. This was the reason he always maintained his dignity with a gold-braided uniform cap.
As soon as the captain reached the house he began discussing his business with Shinji’s mother. Shinji too was present.
When the boys of the village reached the age of seventeen or eighteen they began their maritime training in the capacity of “rice-rinsers,” the local word for apprentice seamen. And Shinji was at the age to be thinking about it. The captain asked if he would like to join the Utajima-maru as a “rice-rinser.”
The mother was silent, and Shinji replied that he would give his answer after he had had a chance to discuss it with Jukichi, his boss. The captain said that if it was a question of Jukichi’s approval, he had already secured that.
But still there was something strange about it all. The Utajima-maru belonged to Terukichi, and there certainly was no reason for him to employ Shinji, whom he disliked so much, as a crew member on one of his own ships.
“No, Uncle Teru himself sees that you’ll make a good sailor. As soon as I mentioned you, Uncle Teru agreed. So come on then, do your best and work hard.”
To make sure it was all right, Shinji accompanied the captain to Jukichi’s house, and Jukichi also strongly urged Shinji to take the job. He said it would be a bit difficult on the Taihei-maru without Shinji, but that he couldn’t stand in the way of the boy’s future. So Shinji agreed.
The next day Shinji heard the startling news that Yasuo too was going to serve an apprenticeship on the Utajima-maru. The story went that Yasuo had not at all relished the idea of becoming a “rice-rinser” and had been forced to agree only when Uncle Teru declared that the apprenticeship had to come before any betrothal to Hatsue.
When Shinji heard this, his heart was filled with anxiety, pain, and then, at the same time, hope.
Together with his mother, Shinji went to Yashiro Shrine to pray for a safe voyage and to obtain a charm.
The day of departure had come. Accompanied by the captain, Shinji and Yasuo boarded the Kamikaze-maru for the ferry-crossing to Toba. A number of people came to see Yasuo off, including Hatsue, but there was no sign of Terukichi. Shinji was seen off by no one but his mother and Hiroshi.
Hatsue did not look in Shinji’s direction. But just as the boat was about to sail, she whispered something to Shinji’s mother and handed her a small package. The mother gave it to her son.
Even after he was on the boat Shinji had no chance to open the package, as the captain and Yasuo were with him. He gazed at the receding outline of Uta-jima. And as he did so he became aware of his own feelings for the first time.
Here he was, a young man born and bred on that island, loving it more than anything else in the world, and yet he was now eager to leave it. It was his desire to leave the island that had made him accept the captain’s offer of a berth on the Utajima-maru.
Once the island was out of sight the boy’s heart became peaceful. As he had never been on his daily fishing trips, he was now free of the thought that tonight he would have to return to the island again.
“I’m free!” he shouted in his heart. This was the first time he had ever realized there could be such a strange sort of freedom as this.
The Kamikaze-maru sailed on through a drizzling rain. Yasuo and the captain stretched out on the straw mats in the passenger cabin and went to sleep. Yasuo had not spoken to Shinji once since they had boarded the ferry.
The boy pressed his face close to one of the round portholes, across which the raindrops were running, and by its light examined the contents of the package from Hatsue. It contained another charm
from Yashiro Shrine, a snapshot of Hatsue, and a letter. The letter read:
“Every day from now on I’ll be going to Yashiro Shrine to pray for your safety. My heart belongs to you. Please take care of yourself and come back safe and sound. I’m enclosing my picture so I can go voyaging with you. It was taken at Cape Daio. About our voyage—Father hasn’t said a word to me, but I think he must have some special reason for putting both you and Yasuo on his ship. And somehow I think I can see a ray of hope for us. Please, please don’t give up hope; please keep on fighting.”
The letter encouraged the boy. Strength filled his arms and the feeling that life was worth living flooded through his entire body.
Yasuo was still asleep. By the light from the porthole Shinji studied Hatsue’s photograph. In it the girl was leaning against one of Cape Daio’s huge pines and a sea-breeze was blowing her skirts, whirling about inside her thin, white summer dress, caressing her bare skin. And his courage was still further revived by the thought that he too had once done just what the wind in the photograph was doing.
Reluctant to take his eyes off the picture, Shinji had propped it up on the edge of the rain-blurred porthole and had stared at it for a long time, when behind it there slowly moved into view the outline of Toshi Island to port. …
Once again the boy’s heart lost its peacefulness. But the strange way in which love can torture the heart with desire was no longer a novel thing for him.
It had stopped raining by the time they reached Toba. Dull silver rays of light shone down from between rifts in the clouds.
Among the many small fishing-boats in Toba’s harbor the one-hundred-and-eighty-five-ton Utajima-maru stood out conspicuously. The three jumped down onto its deck, which was sparkling in the sunshine after the rain. Raindrops were still running gleaming down the white-painted masts, and the imposing booms were folded down over the hatches.